A Matter of Breeding: a mystery set in turn-of-the-century Vienna (A Viennese Mystery)

by J Sydney Jones

  Inspector Thielman queried von Hobarty further about the movements of Klapper, his days off, and whether he had access to von Hobarty’s equipage. Meanwhile, Gross, examining the bookcase, saw a number of books on folklore just as Stoker had earlier noted.

  ‘Did Herr Klapper go in for books on folklore and folk customs?’ he asked.

  ‘He may have been a relative,’ von Hobarty retorted, ‘but I assure you our relationship was one of employer and servant. I hardly know what Klapper went in for in a literary way. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just a thought,’ Gross said. The information about the distinctive mutilations – the quarters of the moon carved into the victims’ sternums – had still not been made public.

  ‘Now you mention it though, he did ask to borrow a book or two now and then,’ von Hobarty said, ‘but I hardly kept track of his reading preferences.’

  Which did not sound to Gross very much like a master-servant relationship, but he said nothing. Klapper was dead, caught at the scene of the crime; evidence of all sorts had been collected from his cottage. It was not part of Gross’s brief to make von Hobarty eat crow.

  Part Four

  Twenty-Four

  Werthen looked at the front page of the London Daily Telegraph that Gross had sent from Czernowitz. A note accompanying the page noted, ‘I had the feeling that our Irish friend would find a way to use this material.’

  The headline of the story below the fold read, ‘Austrian Sherlock Holmes at Work’.

  Berthe was sitting by his side on the leather couch in the sitting room, while seated at the Biedermeier table in a corner, Frieda was busily playing Mikado with Frau Blatschky. The cook was gingerly attempting to lift the prized blue stick from a bundle of other sticks dropped on the table, only to move nearby yellow and black ones, losing her turn.

  She muttered something that made Frieda laugh quite hysterically.

  ‘Stoker was pleasant enough,’ Berthe said. ‘He was quite helpful when Frieda was so ill. One can hardly blame him for doing what writers do.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Werthen said somewhat absently.

  Truth was, Werthen was feeling somewhat irritable. When Frieda miraculously recovered from scarlet fever, he felt that he had learned a vital lesson in life: that there was nothing so precious as family. Nothing else mattered.

  Yet here he was on a quiet family Sunday just a matter of weeks later, with Christmas approaching, and all he could think of was the Styrian affair.

  It had all ended so abruptly; not that he was displeased that the killer had been found and brought to a rough sort of justice, but that after working so hard on the case he had not been in on the finale. There was no doubt that Klapper was the killer. Even though there were no prints to be taken from the knife used to kill Krensky, he had been caught in the act with his last victim. And he was soon connected to the other crimes. Locals who thought nothing of the fact of von Hobarty’s gamekeeper being in their vicinity before his death suddenly came forward to announce that they had seen the man – and his unmistakable birthmark – on the day of the killings in their respective villages. Such are the vagaries of witnesses: expecting the unusual, they overlook the familiar. This was another Gross precept that Klapper had evidently internalized and used against the criminologist.

  Crime solved; still, Werthen wished he had been there on that final tracking.

  The Lipizzaner matter was another annoyance. With the death of Theo Krensky, that scandal was put to rest. The publisher of the Kronen Zeitung did not have Krensky’s research file, only his initial story. And without the source available to back up Krensky’s assertions, no one would publish. Berthe had tried to get the young man to share his source with her before his death, but to no avail.

  The Praesidium in Graz, Magistrate Lechner in particular, was satisfied with the theory that Krensky was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Though Klapper had only killed young women up to then, it was felt that he wanted to confound the police – and particularly Doktor Gross – by changing his modus operandi.

  Gross was immediately thereafter called back to Czernowitz where the new and rival sociology department seemed to be luring away his best criminology students; he made no comment about Klapper’s choice of a fifth victim, nor indeed about the resolution of the case. Otto, finished with his treatment, went back with his father for a brief visit.

  Werthen for one, however, found Krensky’s death awfully convenient for those involved in the Lipizzaner scandal.

  His worries found little support. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, so often in the past his champion, sought only to let the matter rest. And Berthe was only focused on Frieda, so relieved that the child had survived.

  As I should be, as well, he thought.

  ‘How about an outing to the zoo,’ he said, which suggestion elicited squeals of delight from all.

  Berthe had decided to stop the art lessons, but a phone call from Tina Blau brought her to the artist’s studio the following Monday. Blau had been rather vague about her request to speak with Berthe, who feared that she was in for a lecture on the importance of art and commitment. Arriving at the studio, she was thus pleasantly surprised by a request for a professional consultation.

  ‘It has been going on for several weeks now,’ Blau explained. ‘At first I thought these were merely accidents or perhaps the work of some small animals that might have gained access to the studio.’

  She pulled out a canvas from a wooden storage rack, turning it so that Berthe could see the front.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Obviously not the work of a squirrel, then.’

  A black ‘X’ had been scrawled over one student’s effort at a Prater landscape.

  ‘No,’ Blau said, shaking her head. ‘Frau Polster was quite indignant about it. She had put in quite a number of hours on this painting.’

  ‘What other sorts of mischief have there been?’

  ‘At first there was a broken window pane. I thought it the work perhaps of a bird or of some child with a penchant for rocks. I merely had it repaired. Then there was another broken pane a few days later. I had it repaired as well and there was nothing for a week or so. I quite put it out of my mind when one day I discovered a broken easel.’

  ‘Inside the studio, then,’ Berthe said.

  Blau nodded. ‘It could have been the result of an accident. Perhaps one of the students had broken it and felt so badly that she tried to cover it up. Then a few days ago I discovered a hole in one of the students’ paintings. Again, I looked for the simplest explanation …’

  ‘Or most innocent,’ Berthe added.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. I mean, who wants to believe someone is consciously vandalizing one’s property? It could have been a small animal that gnawed through the canvas.’

  ‘You still have the painting?’

  Another nod from Blau. ‘And then came the defacement of Frau Polster’s painting.’

  ‘I will examine them later.’

  ‘Then you will help?’ She sounded awfully relieved.

  ‘Someone is, as you say, vandalizing your property. The police should be consulted.’

  Blau, normally so imposing, suddenly looked sheepish. Her face reddened and she looked down.

  Berthe smiled. ‘Which, by your downcast look, you must have already done. And they said …?’

  ‘They would look into it in due course.’

  ‘So you called me, thinking that meant the police would not bother with such a trifling matter.’

  ‘Frau Mayreder did highly recommend you … There is one thing more. This morning at the front door to the studio I found Fritz. A cat that is half wild but that I have fed for some time. Someone had killed him and placed the carcass just by the entrance. That vile act is what made me call you this morning.’

  ‘And I am glad you did because I do not find this a trifling matter. I see an escalating pattern here, someone crying out for attention, someone determined to cause damage for some reason. Do you have enemies, Fra
u Blau?’

  ‘Besides the art critics, you mean?’

  Berthe smiled. ‘Yes. Besides the obvious.’

  She shook her head. ‘For the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone would want to do this to me.’

  Berthe looked at the slashes of black on the canvas. ‘Perhaps this is not personal. Not directed at you, that is, but at the studio.’

  Werthen was at the office this morning. A new client, Herr Wiesenthal, a distillery owner, was involved in a complicated dispute over land in Upper Austria, and Werthen was up to his ears in deeds and survey maps of boundary lines.

  Franzl, their new office boy, brought in a mid-morning cup of coffee. Werthen had been initially skeptical about hiring the youth – the protégé of the dead riding master – not because he thought the child ill-suited to the work, but because of Erika Metzinger’s history. His secretary had earlier taken in a street urchin with traumatic results. However, this time it seemed to be different. Franzl continued to live with his aunt, and Erika, involved with the journalist Sonnenthal, was not becoming overly attached to him. Werthen felt a real affinity for the young boy, so eager to please and always drawing pictures of horses in his free time.

  He turned his attention back to the documents littering his desk, wishing that he had the excuse of an investigation so that he could hand the lot over to the capable hands of Fräulein Metzinger.

  At that very moment, his wife arrived, accompanied by an older, rather august looking woman. Though diminutive in height, the woman carried herself almost regally, wearing her graying hair in a bun atop her head, and dressed in a sort of smock-like coat, hardly warm enough for the chilly day. She had, Werthen further noted, the most penetrating eyes he had ever seen.

  ‘Karl,’ Berthe said in an excited tone, ‘I believe we have another case.’

  Bless you, he thought.

  Berthe introduced Tina Blau to her husband and, seated now around his desk, she further explained the incidents of vandalism that led Blau to ask for assistance.

  ‘You’re sure the cat did not simply die of natural causes?’ Werthen asked after listening carefully. ‘Perhaps it was in a fight or ate something that had gone bad?’

  ‘Its neck was wrung,’ the painter said matter-of-factly.

  ‘And the times when there was damage done inside, did you also discover any breakage of windows or broken locks?’

  Blau fixed him with her steely gaze letting Werthen know that she was aware of the power of her eyes.

  ‘I see what you are getting at, Advokat Werthen,’ she replied. ‘What the illustrated magazines might call an “inside job”, is that it?’

  ‘Along those lines, yes,’ he allowed.

  ‘Who has keys to the studio?’ Berthe asked.

  ‘Well, I do, of course. It is my working studio. But it is also part of the Vienna Art School for Women and Girls, and in that respect Frau Mayreder of course has a set of keys as does Herr Seligmann, the other director. But you cannot suspect—’

  ‘No,’ Werthen said forcefully, though he had learned too well from Gross that no one should be discounted as a suspect in criminal matters.

  ‘Who cleans the studio?’ Berthe asked.

  ‘I do, of course, but …’

  ‘Yes?’ Berthe said.

  ‘Occasionally, I employ a janitor to give it a thorough cleaning.’

  She was silent again.

  ‘Frau Blau,’ Werthen said gently, ‘we cannot help you unless you are absolutely forthcoming with us. I am sure you understand that.’

  ‘His name is Bachmann. Herbert Bachmann. But he’s been working for me for several years. I am giving his wife lessons in partial trade for his services. He is a good man.’

  ‘I’m sure he is, Frau Blau.’ Werthen smiled at her. ‘I have a suggestion.’

  They were in luck. Checking with Herr Seligmann, they discovered that he had lost his keys several weeks ago and had had to get a replacement set. That could explain how their vandal gained access so easily to Blau’s studio.

  Then, when informed of this new case and of Werthen’s plan to lay in hiding and catch the culprit in the act, Erika Metzinger happily volunteered to join in, as did her young beau Sonnenthal. He had done his military service and knew his way around weapons, so Werthen felt secure in loaning him the Steyr automatic pistol Gross had recently given him. Rosa Mayreder also demanded to participate after learning of the vandalism.

  Thus, they divided into two teams. Werthen, Berthe, and Tina Blau took the first night of watch, and Erika, Sonnenthal, and Frau Mayreder took the next. According to Blau there was no pattern to these events. She could not remember the exact dates of the various acts of vandalism, but they appeared to take place at random. They clearly were not connected with the days when the janitor Bachmann was at work. That would be too obvious if he were their villain. Thus, they would simply have to stand watch nightly until the culprit struck again. Werthen was not fearful of including the women in this, for whoever was committing these acts of vandalism was obviously a coward, Werthen reasoned. Otherwise he, or she, would confront Blau directly. With one man in each team, he was confident they could restrain the miscreant when and if they caught him in the act.

  By Wednesday, it was Werthen’s turn again, and he was wondering how good his idea had been.

  They were hidden away in the storage room off the studio which held a wealth of canvases from students, from Blau, and from Blau’s deceased painter husband, Heinrich Lang. It was uncomfortable and cold. They had learned from their first watch on Monday night that they needed to dress more warmly, but still with the building unheated at night it was most disagreeable. The storage room was so crammed with canvases that they could not fit in chairs, so they had to kneel or crouch on the hardwood floor when not standing.

  Taking up position earlier in the evening with the lights still on in the studio, Berthe showed great interest in one of Lang’s paintings and began a discussion with Blau, but lights out put an end to that.

  They had thought to bring a flask of coffee tonight, but by now the coffee had become tepid at best. Someday, Werthen thought, someone would invent a flask that kept hot liquids hot. He’d read about a British scientist who had created what he called a vacuum flask several years ago, but where was the commercial application?

  Werthen occupied his mind with such desultory thoughts for another hour and was about to call it a night when he thought he heard the click of a lock. He looked to Berthe and Blau and they nodded. They had heard it, too.

  Now came the sound of the front door creaking open and footsteps on the parquet. Werthen put his eye to the crack between the storage room door and its frame and squinted a sight line. He could see the uneven light of a hand-held electric light and finally caught a view of the man holding it. In his other hand the man gripped a large burlap sack. Stopping in the center of the studio by the upraised dais where the model would pose, he set down the light and began to empty to contents of the bag.

  Suddenly Werthen threw open the door of the studio and tripped the switch to the newly installed electric lights. He already had the Steyr automatic in his right hand as the vandal turned around in alarm.

  ‘Hold it right there,’ Werthen commanded.

  Berthe and Blau came out of the storage room behind him.

  ‘Herr Kleinwitz,’ Frau Blau exclaimed. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  To Werthen it was all too obvious what the man was about. The burlap bag contained horse manure and he had been in the process of dumping it on the dais.

  Herr Kleinwitz was too startled to respond.

  ‘Answer her, man,’ Werthen ordered.

  ‘I … I …’ His eyes went from Werthen’s pistol to Blau’s outraged face. He took a deep breath and seemed to find a reservoir of courage. ‘Put that gun away, sir, and I will answer your question. I am no thug.’

  ‘You obviously know him,’ Werthen said to Blau.

  ‘Yes. He calls himself a painter.’

 
; Kleinwitz made an audile growl at this comment. ‘And you are single-handedly destroying Austrian art with this infernal school of yours. If women were meant to paint, they would …’ He searched for the apposite conditional, but in vain.

  ‘Would what, Herr Kleinwitz? Be born with a paint brush in the hand like you men?’

  ‘Very clever. But you know exactly what I mean. Painting is a man’s preserve. Be a weaver, if you like, or a clothing designer like Klimt’s mistress. Leave oil and watercolors to the men.’

  ‘And that is why you have been vandalizing these premises?’ Werthen asked incredulously. ‘Because you’re afraid of female competition?’

  This comment brought a laugh from Berthe and Blau, but Herr Kleinwitz sputtered an obscenity.

  ‘This school is an abomination. It misleads the fairer sex into believing they can be artists. It takes the woman out of the home, destroys marriages. It is a worse scourge than alcohol.’

  ‘Pardon my saying so, Herr Kleinwitz,’ Berthe said, ‘but I find you an odious little man with a contemptible mind and minimal talent.’

  ‘Who are these people?’ Kleinwitz demanded of Blau.

  ‘These people are my friends, Herr Kleinwitz. And now, you will be so good as to clean up the mess on the modeling platform or I will call the police. Trespassing is a crime, I am sure you know.’

  Werthen looked at her quizzically. They had not decided what they would do with the miscreant once he was caught, but Werthen surely did not want him to go free.

  Kleinwitz glared at Blau. ‘I’ll need a shovel.’

  ‘Your hands should do nicely,’ she replied. ‘You can finally use them for real work.’

  Another acid look from the vandal.

  ‘And I assume you also know that theft is a punishable offense?’ Blau added.

  ‘I stole nothing,’ he said.

  ‘The key, Herr Kleinwitz. The key to my studio.’

  ‘I found it.’